And so it begins...

(from left to right: Jeremy, Jay, Nick, Andrew, Kyle, Chuck Norris)


Though technically this is the third year of Awesomefest, I would say that this is the first time I can call it official. The web presence of this blog insures its validation. I am trying to get the word out and maximize this years participants. In order to define what Awesomefest is, I must start at its origin.

Almost two years ago I was having a conversation with my friend Jay. We were excitedly discussing our upcoming two day, round trip bike ride from London to Cincinnati with a few friends (see above picture from that trip). We were starting to get a little worried about being able to complete such a log ride as neither of us had ever done such a trip before. We knew we would have to condition our bodies to be able to complete the 160 round trip miles and our trip was only one month away. I calculated that if we could ride from Westerville to downtown and back, twice in one day that we should be physically capable of completing at least the first leg of our upcoming trip to Cincy. I then told him I would do it. After all, I didn't want to find myself collapsing from heat exhaustion 3 miles south of Yellow Springs. He told me he was also game.

After we finalized our day of conditioning, our next topic of conversation, as it quite often was, was Lord of the Rings. We both love the films and we were talking about how incredibly awesome they are and how we had yet to watch all three extended cuts from back to back. After a second a light went off in our heads. We could combine these activities into one awesome day and even add a third, equally awesome event to create a triathlon of awesome!

We then tried to think of what could be the third sport in this triathlon. It needed to be challenging but in a different way than the 50 miles of biking and 11 straight hours of movies were. Our obvious choice and first thought was to add getting a tattoo. However, we didn't have the money to do this. We couldn't come up with anything equally as awesome and challenging as getting a tattoo, so, technically we didn't end up having a full triathlon that year. However, we did culminate our first Awesomefest with biking into downtown just in time for the commencing of "Red, White and Boom" which we counted as our third sport. The fire works were also a glorious finale to our wearied senses and mud dappled bodies.

Last year we ran Awesomefest just like the first year as we again couldn't afford tattoos. That is why it is my goal that this year, in honor of Jay who is now living in Japan, I am taking it upon myself to make it finally happen. My goal is to line up Studio 35 for the whole day, as well as contract out every tattoo artist within a four mile radius of Clintonville to make this finally happen.

I am sending this blog address out to the local papers and if you can spread the word through your own blogs, word of mouth, etc, we can start to get the momentum going. I also want to hear from you fellow bikers, tattoo artists and aficionados and film buffs about ideas and connections you may have.

We need to set a date (I am thinking about August), reserve tattoo artists, secure a theater and a decide on a set of films to watch (I am thinking all of the "Rocky"s) as well as plan a route for the biking portion of the day. Also, I am thinking there will need to be a June 1st deadline to pre-register in order to secure the tattoo artists and get an idea of how many people are participating.

I look forward to making this so-called Indie Capital of the World a little bit Awesomer.

-Nick Fancher